Monthly active user growth surpasses the mainland market, Meitu "avoids giants" and goes overseas

Interface News reporter | She Xiaocheng

Interface News editor | Wen Shuqi

On March 27, Meitu Inc. (1357.HK) released its 2025 annual performance results. The financial report shows that in 2025, Meitu’s total revenue was RMB 3.86 billion, up 28.8% year over year; adjusted attributable net profit was RMB 965 million, up 64.7% year over year. Among them, revenue from imaging and design products rose 41.6% year over year to RMB 2.95 billion, accounting for 76.6% of total revenue, making it Meitu’s largest revenue source.

Meitu said that the growth in total revenue and net profit was mainly due to the integration of AI Agent into its product matrix and its rapid breakout, which significantly boosted the number of global paid subscription users. In 2025, Meitu’s imaging and design product revenue was RMB 2.95 billion, up 41.6% year over year. Regarding the growth in this revenue, Meitu also attributes it to an increase in the number of global paid subscription users.

After clarifying its positioning as an AI application company, Meitu’s strategic trade-offs are based on building vertical applications from external models, launching multiple C-end (user) products. Meitu’s founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Wu Xinghong said during the earnings conference call that in the imaging field, large models each have their own strengths, and there has not been a single model that covers all scenarios. Meitu believes that in the future, vertical application companies will become increasingly common in continuously improving product performance by combining the advantages of different models.

One key piece of information in Meitu’s 2025 results is that the growth of monthly active users in its overseas market outpaced that in the Mainland market. This is an initial outcome of Meitu’s global expansion strategy in 2025.

According to information disclosed by the company, as of the time of publication, Meitu’s Meitu XiuXiu ranked #1 on the overall charts in 52 countries and regions on the App Store, and #1 on the category charts in 119 countries and regions. As of December 31, 2025, Meitu had 16.91 million paid subscription users, up 34.1% year over year. The subscription penetration rate was 6.1%. At the same time, Meitu’s global monthly active users reached 276 million, up 3.8% year over year.

From the financial report, the slowdown in the growth rate of domestic business is also a background factor that cannot be ignored when Meitu focuses on overseas markets. In 2025, Meitu’s monthly active users in markets outside China’s Mainland exceeded 100 million, up 6.3% year over year. The growth rate is already higher than that in the Mainland market’s monthly active users. In this year, competition in China’s AI application market intensified step by step; major players increased massive investment and subsidies, beginning to absorb some share from vertical vendors. In 2025, in rankings released by different institutions, large-company apps frequently dominated the charts.

Image source: Meitu annual report

During this earnings conference call, Meitu released some information regarding its overseas market layout.

From the current strategy, Meitu chooses to “avoid the giants” in overseas markets and look for breakthroughs in niche scenarios. Wu Xinghong said that Meitu will look for some markets that major players do not focus on, and then go offline to find tracks that have a large user base but have not been paid attention to. For example, Meitu disclosed that the AI couple photo feature helped Meitu XiuXiu’s monthly active users reach a historic high, attracting more than 3 million net-new active users from the European market. The AI snow scene feature drove growth in new users, helping Meitu XiuXiu top the U.S. category chart for the first time in its history.

Overseas markets tend to have a higher willingness to pay for subscriptions, which also aligns with Meitu’s business direction. A few years ago, Meitu made two key decisions internally: first, to focus on its imaging and design core business; second, to firmly embrace the paid subscription model. The financial report disclosed that in the second half of 2025, paid subscription users from markets outside Mainland China accelerated in growth; most of the net-new paid subscription users came from regions with mature subscription habits and higher ARPU (average revenue per paying user), including Europe, the Americas, and East Asia.

Meitu’s Chief Product Officer Chen Jianyi said during the earnings conference call, “We are still relatively optimistic about overseas paid habits.” He believes that in overseas regions where design costs are higher, there will be many opportunities for tools to replace traditional design outsourcing.

Meitu views “100 million overseas monthly active users” as an important milestone. During the earnings conference call, Wu Xinghong told Interface News that in 2026, Meitu will continue to focus on investing in the Asian market, while also allocating resources for localization in more markets such as Europe and the U.S.

However, with technology changing rapidly, 100 million monthly actives overseas may only be the starting point. In overseas markets, the growth of AI applications is also not smooth sailing.

Globally, AI applications face competition from major players and startups, and even pressure from them. For example, in the global rankings released by AI-sector statistics institution a16z, in addition to “super entry points” such as ChatGPT that aim to cover everything, ByteDance’s video editing software CapCut9 (its international version) also ranks among the top AI applications on mobile. Its functions include intelligent cutout (automatic subject extraction), AI effects, and more, which overlap to a certain extent with Meitu’s products. Meanwhile, at the same time, the “AI + creation tools” track—among which Meitu is involved—is especially hot, and holds a substantial share in the rankings.

Image source: a16z

On the promotion front, app companies also face cost challenges in overseas markets.

Financial report data shows that within the one-year period ended December 31, 2025, Meitu’s sales and marketing expenses were RMB 599.6 million, up 25.5% compared with 2024. The company explained that the increase mainly resulted from expanding promotional investment to drive the growth of productivity tools in Mainland China and life-scenario applications in markets outside Mainland China. In addition, in 2025, Meitu’s total operating costs increased by 42% year over year, and the largest cost item was channel revenue sharing. This cost will increase as revenue from imaging and design products grows; it increased by 43.5% year over year.

For cost control, Meitu’s solution at this stage is to make good use of marketing on social media. Wu Xinghong told Interface News that this is a user-growth approach with a relatively high input-output ratio for Meitu. He summarized that Meitu’s products usually go through several stages: first, they validate PMF (product-market fit)—often by quickly obtaining validation results through social media marketing; after validation is successful, the company gradually increases investment in social media marketing; once the business model becomes relatively mature, it begins to increase investment in user acquisition techniques such as buying ads.

In the squeeze between major players and “AI new贵s,” overseas markets have already become an outlet explored by a substantial portion of Chinese AI application companies. According to estimates by the Future Think Tank, in 2025, global traffic for AI applications going overseas exceeded 7.6 billion visits, of which Chinese companies accounted for about 50%. But after cracking the door open, Meitu and these companies still need to find their core advantages to avoid falling into the predicament of being swallowed up.